U.S. at a Critical Crossroads in Middle East

After years of struggling with its foreign policy in the Middle East the United States finds itself at a critical crossroads. Students and workers in Egypt, Iran, Bahrain, Algeria, Libya, and Yemen are rising up against oppressive dictators and fight for their basic human rights and democracy. Unfortunately, these dictators have been good buddies of the United States government and key to our Mid East policy. So now we, the United States – the defender and promoter of democracy world wide, now faces the dilemma that democracy may NOT be in its own best interest.

How did we let this happen? How did we allow our nation to get to the point where freedom and democracy for an oppressed people could be a bad thing for us? How could we have befriended dictators at the expense of the people simply because it served our own (short-term) best interest?

It is time for the United States to turn over a new leaf and to once again become the champion of freedom and support peaceful regime change in these countries. The U.S. government must gently use its influence in these nations, like it did in Egypt, to move them toward open, real democracy.

We MUST to take a stand – even if these new governments are not great friends of the U.S. initially (who could blame them?). But we have to believe that, in the long-term, democracies work together, they don’t go to war with each other, and they don’t fly planes into each other’s buildings. These revolutions could be the first legitimate opportunity in 2,000 for real peace and stability and the U.S. government cannot sit idly by and miss this chance!